Me and design

children's chair by Charles Eames, 1944

I grew up in a home where my parents were very aware of design. They
were both art teachers in the NYC school system. In the 1930's they had
designed and renovated a living space in an old three story storefront
building in the east Bronx. They even bought an upright piano which was
custom built to their specifications-- no frills, just plain birch veneer,
finished clear. It was in this house that I grew up.

By the time I was born the house was filled with furniture they had purchased
at the 1939 World's Fair-- chairs by Breuer, Avar Alto, and Jens Risom.
One of my earliest seats (when I was 4) was the bright red "children's
chair" designed by Charles Eames.

We regularly visited the Museum of Modern Art where, as members, we could
go up to the penthouse cafeteria and look out over the city.

At home I grew up looking at, and learning to read from, Norman BelGeddes'
book "Horizons," (1932) and his subsequent "Magic Motorways"
(1940) as well as a book called "Circle" (a dialog about constructivist
art with many pictures) and a 1938 book about the Bauhaus published by
MOMA.

My parents had both taken courses with Josef Albers, and when books like
Kepes' "Language of Vision" (1944) and Lazlo Moholy-Nagy's "Vision
in Motion" (1947) came out, I was reading them, although not quite
understanding them!

Most of all, I was interested in things mechanical. The gears and ratchets
I saw on the motors and the rides at the amusement park fascinated me
more than the rides themselves. I built linkages with my "Erector
Set" ("Meccano" to those from the UK!), and buildings with
my "Lincoln Logs" and blocks.

There was never any doubt that what I wanted to be was an industrial
designer. Because I was getting all the "art" I needed at home,
I never took any art classes in high school, concentrating instead on
an academic program. When it came time to select a college, my high school
guidance counselor suggested I apply to Swarthmore, Oberlin, and Brown.
Pratt Institute in Brooklyn NY had the reputation as having the best industrial
design program in the country. To the dismay of my guidance counselor
("Pratt? But that's a trade school!"), I put together a portfolio,
and applied. It was the only school to which I applied. I was accepted,
and began my courses in the fall of 1959.

Through my four years, I was blessed with some magnificent teachers,
although I grew to understand some of them only in retrospect. I had Rowena
Reed Kostellow who got me to understand form on a very deep level,
Ivan Rigby who exuded good taste, Ron Beckman
who pushed a lot of my buttons, Gerald Gulotta and Sam Lebowitz who led
me through formal explorations, and Bill Katavalos
who taught me (on many levels) how to think.

At my first job at Schwartz/Wassyng
Design, NYC. Discussing a job with project director Owen Coleman.

I graduated in 1963 and proceeded to get a number of jobs in the field:
Schwartz/Wassyng, a product and package design office who did work for
Seagrams, Clairol, Faberge, and similar clients; Braun Packaging, who
had a small design staff connected with their injection molding and stamping
facility (clamshell boxes for watches, pens, knives, etc.); and Carl Otto
Design, a small office doing work for Seagrams, Royal Typewriters, Yale
forklifts.

All the while I was looking around for something else. I knew I was
interested in design, but none of the jobs was quite what I wanted. Along
the way I had a most disappointing interview with the Raymond Loewy office
in New York. They looked at my portfolio, saw bottles and typewriters,
and told me they were working on trains and if they ever did typewriters
they would give me a call. I was stunned and amazed by their narrowness
of vision.

Prototype (turned) at rear, final (shaped) at
front.

Playtown Garage. Series also had
a Fire Station, Marina, and Airport.

I wound up with a job at Creative Playthings in Princeton, NJ. Creative
Playthings was a small company whose business was centered around wooden
toys. In 1966 or so they were purchased by CBS, who poured money into
the company and established a design office for them. The original owners
were nominally in charge.

I designed a hand-cranked music box toy (ripped
off by Hong Kong-- a sure sign of success) and a complete re-work of "playtown"
items. I was then transferred to another area (The Learning Center) within
the design department. In the long run, it was a blessing. We were working
on educational science toys and I became interested in education.

One of the lines was a "Discovery of the Month" series, and
I did a set that taught principles of musical instruments.
Unfortunately, my immediate superior was a non-thinking plodder and an
impossible person to get along with. I decided to leave, and was making
preparations to do so. One day he said something at which I took offense
and I responded with, as the great country and western singer Johnny Paycheck
sung, "Take this job and shove it." As I recall, a few more
expletives referring to his anal orifice, his male anatomy and his possible
sexual relationship to his mother were used. They heard me all the way
down in accounting. It felt great! How many wish they could do that and
never do?

I found myself at home at 10 o'clock on a Tuesday morning with no job.
What to do?

The answer, of course, lay in going deep within and asking. It was 1969.
What else to do? That weekend I ingested 500 micrograms of "orange
sunshine" and sat in meditation in the local cemetery (the only quiet
place in my little town) for the afternoon.

I decided that I knew a lot about many things and it was my mission
to teach others what I knew. Education was the answer.

I phoned the employment service at Pratt, and they said that a graduate
of the ID department was running the ID program at the Philadelphia College
of Art, and was looking for a teacher. I phoned him, went for an interview,
and was hired. As quick as that.

I moved to Philadelphia in August 1969, and
left the tenured position in 1995 when I moved to New Zealand. It
was a wonderful 26 years.

Looking out to the courtyard from
the ID Department. 1970.

I taught all the classes in the ID Department
at some time, but settled in teaching Sophomore level drawing (both conceptual
and technical) and the major Sophomore design studio. I also taught one
section per year in Three-Dimensional Design at the 1st year "Foundation"
level.

In full robes at my last graduation ceremony,
University of the Arts, May, 1995.

It was the most wonderful job I have ever had. Being able, day in and
day out, to work at turning people on to the joys of dimensional design
and thinking is a blessing. Having a student experience the big "Ah
ha!" is a gift beyond all price.

When I moved to New Zealand I worked for a while as a part-time tutor
in the Industrial Design department at the Wellington Polytechnic and,
for the last few years, I have been teaching drawing (and thinking) part
time at Whitireia Polytechnic -- just a stone's throw from my house.

I think back to the trip in the cemetery in 1969. My major realization
was that I would be lucky if, as a designer, I would be able to contribute
one valuable thing to the universe. But as an educator, I could teach
perhaps 30 people a year. If each of them, because of their education,
were able to give one good thing to the universe, then I would have been
of more value to the universe as an educator than as a product designer.

At an Industrial Design Society of America meeting many years ago, the
ID faculty of a number of schools were showing the products their students
had designed. Rini Petrini, the chair of an ID department at a school
in Montana, showed a slide of his class of students and said, "These
are my products." Indeed!